Abbas said the vote was the last chance to save the two-state solution.

Israel's U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, warned the General Assembly that "the Palestinians are turning their backs on peace" and that the U.N. can't break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.

The General Assembly vote was pretty much certain to succeed,with most of the 193 member states sympathetic to the Palestinians. Several key countries, including France, recently announced they would support the move to elevate the Palestinians from the status of U.N. observer to nonmember observer state.

In Washington, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “I don’t think that (the vote) practically will have a huge influence or a major impact on any issue. ... I don’t see this as the major consequence. I think the most important urgent need is to open direct negotiations. Even if we cannot agree on a fully fledged peace, probably we can accomplish something, which is better than the status quo.”

Palestinians say the vote strengthens their hand in future talks with Israel, which has lambasted the recognition bid as an attempt to bypass such negotiations.

Jubilant Palestinians crowded around outdoor screens and television sets at home Thursday to watch the United Nations vote.

In a last-ditch move Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns made a personal appeal to Abbas promising that President Barack Obama would re-engage as a mediator in 2013 if Abbas abandoned the effort to seek statehood. The Palestinian leader refused, said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.

The initiative will not immediately bring about independence, and a country’s vote in favor of the status change does not automatically imply its individual recognition of a Palestine state, something that must be done bilaterally. Nevertheless, the Palestinians view it as a historic step in their quest for global recognition, and thousands of Palestinians from rival factions celebrated in the streets of the West Bank ahead of Thursday’s vote.

The Palestinians say they need U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967, to be able to resume negotiations with Israel. They say global recognition of the 1967 lines as the borders of Palestine is meant to salvage a peace deal, not sabotage it, as Israel claims.

The non-member observer state status could also open the way for possible war crimes charges against the Jewish state at the International Criminal Court.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Palestinians on Thursday that they would not win their hoped-for state until they recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland, declare an end to their conflict with the Jewish state and agree to security arrangements that protect Israel.

“The resolution in the U.N. today won’t change anything on the ground,” Netanyahu declared. “It won’t advance the establishment of a Palestinian state, but rather, put it further off.”

While Israel argues that Abbas is trying to dictate the outcome of border talks by going to the U.N., the recognition request presented to the world body in fact calls for a quick resumption of negotiations on all core issues of the conflict, including borders.

Netanyahu’s predecessors accepted the 1967 lines as a basis for border talks. Netanyahu has rejected the idea, while pressing ahead with Jewish settlement building on war-won land, giving Abbas little incentive to negotiate.

For Abbas, the U.N. bid is crucial if he wants to maintain his leadership and relevance, especially following the recent conflict between his Hamas rivals in Gaza and Israel. The conflict saw the Islamic militant group claim victory and raise its standing in the Arab world, while Abbas’ Fatah movement was sidelined and marginalized.

In a departure from previous opposition, the Hamas militant group, which rules the Gaza Strip, said it wouldn’t interfere with the U.N. bid, and its supporters joined some of the celebrations Thursday.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, some in a crowd of several thousand raised green Hamas flags, while in the city of Ramallah, senior figures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two militant groups normally opposed to Abbas, addressed the crowd.

“It’s the right step in the right direction,” Nasser al-Shaer, a former deputy prime minister from Hamas, said of the U.N. bid.

The Palestinians chose the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” for the vote. Before it takes place, there will be a morning of speeches by supporters focusing on the rights of the Palestinians. Abbas is scheduled to speak at that meeting, and again in the afternoon when he will present the case for Palestinian statehood in the General Assembly.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Wednesday that the U.N. vote will not fulfill the goal of independent Palestinian and Israeli states living side by side in peace, which the U.S. strongly supports because that requires direct negotiations.

“We need an environment conducive to that,” she told reporters in Washington. “And we’ve urged both parties to refrain from actions that might in any way make a return to meaningful negotiations that focus on getting to a resolution more difficult.”

The U.S. Congress has threatened financial sanctions if the Palestinians improve their status at the United Nations.

Ahead of the vote, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch filed an amendment to a defense bill Wednesday that would eliminate funding for the United Nations if the General Assembly changes Palestine’s status.

But Israeli officials appeared to back away from threats of drastic measures if the Palestinians get U.N. approval, with officials suggesting the government would take steps only if the Palestinians use their new status to act against Israel.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev affirmed that Israel is willing to resume talks without preconditions.